Press

Thinking about how we could use an extension or an app like Rentlogic to help contract-to-deed, land contract purchaser, rent-to-owners could use in order to vet the different companies they sign with!

Rentlogic, a startup trying to give renters the real story about their apartments, has recently released a browser extension that tells renters the grade–A, B, C, or F–of the building they’re looking at. That building on the Upper West Side, for instance, gets an F because of the number of violations verified by New York City inspectors that have accumulated over the years. The extension works across every major rental listings site in New York City.

“The idea of creating this plugin is that we don’t really care where you find your apartment, if you go on StreetEasy, Craigslist, Zillow, or if you just call a broker, we just want you to look up the rating before you sign the lease,” says Yale Fox, the company’s founder and CEO.

The 44-year-old father of two had rented a single-family house from a company called HavenBrook Homes, which is controlled by one of the world’s biggest money managers, Pacific Investment Management Co. Here in Fulton County, Georgia, such large institutional investors are up to twice as likely to file eviction notices as smaller owners, according to a new Atlanta Federal Reserve study. “I’ve never …

Detroit isn’t the only old industrial city attracting rental landlords at a record clip. Last year, investors accounted for 75 percent of sales in Flint, Michigan, 68 percent in Gary, Indiana, and 51 percent in Memphis, Tennessee. Other cities with comparable rates are vacation communities such as Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (69 percent) and Honolulu (54 percent). With investors dominating these housing markets, it’s …

Contract for What? A contract is shorthand for “contract for deed,” also advertised as “rent to buy,” “seller financing,” or “installment land contracts.” These are not inherently predatory, as any northern Midwesterner will tell you. Land contracts are common ways to finance real estate, especially in rural areas without many banks. In 2009, the last year such data was collected, …

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, includes 17 plaintiffs, who say they were misled by Harbour Portfolio and associated companies into thinking they were becoming owners when they signed agreements that effectively made them renters. Harbour targeted black areas with the deals, known as “contracts for deed” or “land contracts,” which gave the plaintiffs “all of the obligations of …

“The companies make it difficult for aspiring homeowners to ever achieve the goal of ownership, which is what they think they are doing,” she told the AJC. “None of the people in this lawsuit understood. They believed they were becoming homeowners and they later found out they were functionally renters. Source: Lawsuit: Texas Real Estate Firm Targeted Black Neighborhoods, …

“Across the country, people like Mr. Williams have found themselves in similar predicaments. Unable to obtain a traditional mortgage, they have signed a high-interest, seller-financed deal known as a contract for deed that works like an installment plan for housing. For many, these deals can quickly turn into money traps. The deals also have added to neighborhood blight when the …

“The nation’s top consumer regulatory agency is seeking to hold a South Carolina housing finance company in contempt for moving too slowly to respond to a judge’s order that it turn over documents and audio recordings. A federal judge on Tuesday referred the matter to a United States magistrate judge for a hearing. The unusual legal maneuver by the agency, …